Photographer: Nicolas Asfouri / AFP / Getty Images
Photographer: Nicolas Asfouri / AFP / Getty Images
Chinese schoolchildren are set to intensify the study of President Xi Jinping’s teachings ahead of the government’s centennial celebration in July.
The party’s central committee on Wednesday issued new guidelines to boost ideological education among young Chinese pioneers, a national youth organization with which it is affiliated. The guidelines stated that all primary school children and the first two years of secondary school should have one class per week for Young Pioneer activities, and basic training materials for teachers should be designed by Xi.
The members of the Young Pioneers should be taught to “firmly heed” Xi’s teachings and “do what Xi taught,” the guide said.
In China, everyone, from diplomats to directors to SF writers, is under pressure to incorporate into their policies the broad, often unclear principles of “Xi Thought” as part of the effort to elevate it alongside Maoism and contribute to strengthen the President’s effort to continue cement control.
Read more: The rise of “Xi thought” shows a long future for human rule in China
The document also called for children to be taught that “today’s happy life ultimately comes from the correct leadership of the party” as well as “from the superiority of our socialist system”.
Strengthening “political enlightenment and the formation of values” among children is of strategic importance to ensure that “red eyelashes are passed down from generation to generation,” a party spokesman, the People’s Daily, said on the front page on Thursday. citing guidelines.
Another state-backed newspaper, China Daily, quoted the guidelines in a the song entitled “Cultivating children seen as strategic”. The newspaper wrote that children are the future of the nation and the Communist Party, which has always made cultivating the country in a good way a “strategic” and “fundamental” task.
The role of pioneers
The guidelines come as Xi visited a village in southwestern Guizhou Province that the state media said had successfully eradicated poverty. Posing for photos of Miao ethnic minority people dressed in traditional clothing, Xi greeted all Chinese people before the Lunar New Year, which this year falls on February 11. The president also inspected the clean-up of a previously contaminated river.
Young Chinese Pioneers was founded in 1949 and includes almost all children in China between the ages of six and 14. He played an “irreplaceable role” in guiding generations of children to follow the party’s instructions, according to the guidelines.
Although it was unclear what the total number of current members was, 2007 data put the figure at around 130 million.
The guidelines also provided for the promotion of exchanges between young pioneers on the mainland and children’s organizations in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, in order to enhance the “national, ethnic and cultural identity” of young people in these areas.
– With the assistance of Colum Murphy and Jing Li